This is Day 3 of our Halloween candy wars. Click
What is the ultimate Halloween candy? In Tuesday's bitter battle, Sour Patch Kids edged out Sour Skittles by a mere two points. On Day Three our crackerjack panel – reporter Dakshana Bascaramurty, Web editor Cliff Lee and nine-year-old candy aficionado Alvaro Geiger – consider whether crispiness is superior to crunchiness when they sample the bars your parents used to steal.
COFFEE CRISP
Vital Stats: Crispy, wide wafers layered with frothy coffee cream and covered in a milk-chocolate coating. Need for vacuum or dust pan to get rid of crumbs after consumption: High.
Claim to fame: True to its name, the bar contains real coffee. It appears on the ingredient list before polyglycerol polyricinoleate, but after cocoa butter. Due to the cost of production, for years Nestlé used "vanillin" as a flavouring but an industry shift to more natural flavours pressured the company to switch to real vanilla this past January.
Taste: The '80s tagline – "It makes a nice, light snack"– still holds up. The wafers are crisp and thin enough not to overpower this bar. The milk chocolate is sweet and the coffee cream is mild (while children might find the coffee scent and taste overpowering, it's basically like a sugar-heavy vanilla latte).
Expert opinion: "What I used to do when I ate these was I'd eat them over the wrapper and all the crumbs would fall in and then I would lick my finger and dip it in and lick it again." - D.B.
"Ewwww." -A.G.
Rating: 23/30
CRUNCHIE
Vital Stats: Bubble-pocked golden core of sponge toffee covered in thick, creamy milk chocolate. Not recommended for braces-wearers by four out of five orthodontists.
Claim to fame: Remember last year when you blew your New Year's Eve party budget on hors d'oeuvres and decor and had to serve Baby Duck (the shame!) at midnight? If it were 1999, there would've been a solution: Cadbury released a limited-edition bar "with the flavour of a splash of bubbly."
Taste: At first, you get a strong hit of rich milk chocolate and then, after crushing through the bulk of the bar with your front teeth, shards of sugary sponge toffee pile up on your tongue. This combination is borderline too-sweet, which is why the Halloween "fun size" bar is far superior to its regular size.
Expert opinion: "It looks like SpongeBob is in the candy." -A.G.
Rating: 22.5/30